Mr. Speaker, to begin, I would like to say that we in the Bloc Quebecois feel a great deal for the situation that farmers in western Canada are experiencing.
Once again, agriculture in Canada is being threatened by the Liberal government's inertia. This is not hard to fathom, because since the current Prime Minister announced his retirement, there has not been any debate of substance on the economy, with the exception of the reply to the Speech from the Throne, an anemic document full of recycled promises and unfulfilled commitments from the Liberal Prime Minister.
I almost forgot. There was one little insignificant line about agriculture, which again demonstrates how important the sector is to the Liberals. To put it clearly, the Speech from the Throne on September 30 did not broach any of the problems affecting farmers. There was nothing on the protection of supply management. There was nothing on rural development. There was nothing on tax measures for agricultural cooperatives. There was nothing on GMOs. There was nothing on intergenerational transfers of farms and also nothing on natural disaster relief, such as what the people out west are currently experiencing. How unfortunate. All this explains why agriculture is currently in such rough shape.
In my brief career as a member of this House who was elected in June 1997, not one year has gone by when we have not had one or two emergency debates on agriculture. Are such debates brought about by the economic context? No, but rather by the irresponsibility of the Liberals, who have abdicated their responsibilities.
The federal Liberals—be it the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister for International Trade, the Minister of Finance or backbenchers—support the vision of the current Prime Minister, who treats agriculture as a second class industry in this country.
All the while this government is attempting to download part of the bill onto the provinces and acting behind dairy producers' backs, it is failing to take its responsibilities.
I would like to mention the drastic and dramatic cuts the Liberals have made to support to Canadian farmers. The current Minister of Agriculture has been played like a schoolboy by the Americans and the European Community, which obstinately refuse to lower their agricultural subsidies, as provided in the GATT agreements.
Let me give a few figures. Between 1993 and 1999, farm assistance programs were cut by $1 billion.
In this very place, we repeatedly and vigorously denounced the cuts made by the Liberals. We accused them, and rightly so, of having reduced the deficit on the backs of the provinces, the workers, the unemployed, the sick and—I say so unequivocally today—Canadian and Quebec farmers.
Last spring, during the umpteenth consultation tour by the Standing Committee on Agriculture, at the specific request of the Minister of Agriculture, we were able to size up the crisis in the agricultural industry.
This minister keeps consulting, but forgets to come up with a real plan for the future of agriculture. Moreover, bereft of ideas, the Liberals went on their own partisan tour before this one, but nothing concrete came of it. This lack of leadership has forced thousands of farms into bankruptcy in western Canada. This region is now faced with one of the worst droughts in its history.
I will tell you, if I may, what I saw and heard during my tour of the Canadian west. I saw people whose family farming heritage dated back for generations. These men and women came to tell us in anguish that, if the federal government did not come to their aid, things were over for them.
The Liberals have turned a deaf ear. They are not listening to the complaints from farmers in the west as well as many in Quebec.
After this extensive tour, the committee published a voluminous report last June on the agricultural sector's expectations of the Liberal government. We all were given copies of this wonderful report, and still we wait. The crisis has worsened in the meantime.
The Liberals' response is always the same. There is no concrete follow-up, despite the report recommendations. Our audience realizes that the end result of all this traipsing across the country once a year or so—and I have seen a number of these tours since 1997—is to disturb people, consult them, ask their opinion, tell them changes will be coming. Then none do, and so the government over there has no shred of credibility left. No credibility with the people of the maritimes, Quebec, Ontario or western Canada.
The Prime Minister delayed the beginning of the session of the House of Commons.